The whole of the wetland was sparkling with Emperor Dragonflies patrolling the pools: a few females laid eggs by Water-Lilies, the males occasionally chasing prey, or a rival. The margins were full of Azure Damselflies, nearly all males: I saw one pair in wheel formation.
The marshy areas bristled with Southern Marsh OrchidsRed-Eyed Damselfly
Several Red-Eyed Damselfly males displayed on lily-pads, chasing off rivals; occasionally an Azure came by too. Over one or two of the smaller pools, a Hairy Dragonfly patrolled; one of them had an aerial tussle with a similarly-sized red dragonfly, I think a Common Darter.
Yellow Rattle
Overhead, quite a few Sand Martins caught insects over the water (well, the Wetland Centre does sport West London’s only Sand Martin bank, an artificial river cliff), along with a few Swifts, and I think exactly one Swallow … it feels as if something terrible has happened to these populations. They have to migrate across the Sahel, the Sahara, the Mediterranean, and numerous populations of hungry village boys and keen shooters, so it’s something of a miracle there are any left: and that’s not even speaking about climate change.
Blue and yellow Vetches bringing colour to the tall grassland, with tendrils everywhere
A couple of Common Terns, presumably those breeding on the Wetland Centre’s lake islands, made their bright and cheery waterbird calls as they wheeled about, searching for glimpses of tiny fish to dive in and catch.
Common Spotted Orchid
There were only a few butterflies about – a Red Admiral, a Holly Blue, a couple of Speckled Wood, some Whites, a female Brimstone. For me, the bees and pollinators looked well down on normal, too. Amidst the warmth of the day, the beauty, the peace, and the brilliant colours, it is a sombre tale of decline.
Chartwell’s glorious walled gardensFemale Emperor Dragonfly ovipositing in Churchill’s Golden Orfe (Goldfish) PondOld-fashioned Rhubarb-forcing pots. The roots are grown to be big and strong, then planted out. Early in spring, the roots are covered with the pot, so the leaves etiolate, growing tall leaf-stalks (petioles) very rapidly as the plants search desperately for light. The result: big early rhubarb, without bitterness, greenness, or toughness, ready to poach gently in sugared water and serve.Chartwell, wonderful on many levels (including the garden’s numerous terraces) – historical, political, landscape, garden design, and sheer colour and space, delightful. The house dates back to Tudor times, c. 1550, though there was some sort of building here centuries before that. In the foreground, the wide meadow contains an area left to grow tall full of Knapweed and other wild flowers and grasses.
Water Gardens and foliage of many shapes and colours at Wakehurst PlaceA grassy dell on the side of the main valley, with Oaks and RhododendronsAzure Damselflies in cop, well seen from the handsome boardwalk at the far end of the gardens. The blue male has a U-shaped mark at the front of his abdomen; the green female has a thistle-shaped mark in the same place. Unlike the Common Blue damselfly, she does not have a spine sticking down out of the second-from-last ‘tail’ segment.
Emperor Dragonfly habitat: the beautiful main pond by the Wakehurst Place lawns. Yellow and White Waterlilies are in full bloom.
Well, I was hoping to see some colourful dragonflies on this hot and sunny day in early June, and they exceeded expectations. On the main pond just behind the Wakehurst Place mansion, the bulky shape of an Emperor Dragonfly, with its big apple-green thorax and downcurved blue abdomen, patrolled up and down over the Yellow and White Waterlilies, both gloriously in bloom. A single Broad-Bodied Chaser unmistakably whizzed low over the water.
The Water Gardens glittered in the sunshine, the little waterfalls tinkled pleasingly, and a few damselflies busied themselves among the vegetation.
Traditional Sussex Craftsmanship: Boardwalk, with green-oak posts and rails (cloven not sawn, making them elegant, rugged, and strong as the grain runs unbroken the whole length of each rail) at the water gardens.
Down at the reedbed, the broad and elegantly-fenced boardwalk with its traditional green-oak posts and rails let us get as close as possible to the dragonflies down there. A Large Red Damselfly perched for a moment beside my hand on the rail. Azure Damselflies skittered about, some in cop, some ovipositing. A solitary Banded Demoiselle male, unmistakable with his big indigo wing-patches, fluttered back and forth.
The other side of the boardwalk, a male dragonfly hovered over open water in the dazzling sunlight. I did my best to focus on the shimmering target. An Emerald! The Downy Emerald has been recorded here at Wakehurst Place, but this is also within the very narrow territory of the Brilliant Emerald in England, basically a bit of inland Sussex and Surrey, with another haunt in northwest Scotland. There is no sign of a downy thorax here, I don’t think; nor is the abdomen bronze-green, but rather a rich deep, iridescent, green; and it has the smooth spatulate outline of a Brilliant Emerald. Exciting!
Well this looks to me like a Brilliant Emerald Dragonfly! Sorry about the blurry photo – such things are never easy, but this one is rather interesting.
The meadows, too, were glorious in their early summer best, full of red clover, buttercups, and plenty of stalks of Common Spotted Orchid among the slender grass stems.
Spotted leaf of Common Spotted Orchid, in case you aren’t familiar with it!
A pond at Bramshill. Reedmaces in foreground, water level well down in current drought. Succession (sere) from open water – floating pondweed – emergent plants e.g. rushes, then reed and reedmace, then willow bushes, finally birch-oak mixed forest
Black-Tailed Skimmer on his lookout perch
Common Darter: he too constantly returned to this perch
Brown Hawker female, ovipositing
The ‘beach’ on the Long Pond, Bramshill
Emperor Dragonfly on reedmaces at end of Long Pond, Bramshill. Zipping about were lots of blue/azure damselflies, common darters, and black-tailed skimmers, and a few bluetails.
The Long Pond, Bramshill – perfect dragonfly habitat. Open water with floating weed, bordered by beds of rushes, reeds, willow and alder bushes. Conifers in the background
Common Fleabane – a handsome yellow composite in forest ditch, Bramshill
A flock of some fifty Swallows twittered high above the sparkling blue lake among the bog pools. Dragonflies – the occasional Emperor, plenty of small red Common Darters and tiny Black Darters, some Migrant Hawkers – dashed about or sunned themselves on the boardwalks. A pair of Hobbies, those dashing, Swift-winged falcons, soared and watched the Swallows cunningly, waiting for a careless moment. One of the Hobbies swooped down, raced low, agile, among the reeds, up and switchback over a dead tree to snatch a dragonfly on the wing, powered right across the wide bog all the way to the pinewoods. Three pairs of Common Darters in cop, the males leading the females, their claspers about their females’ necks, flew in strict formation like so many Spitfires. A Hobby, high above the bog, accelerated in a long straight shallow dive, for all the world like a Junkers 88 bomber taking careful aim, racing down for a hundred yards at incredible speed to grab a dragonfly: it must have seen its prey all that distance away.
Birch Bog Bolete Leccinum rigidipes
Clusters of the light brown Birch Bog Bolete – yes, it grows under Birches in Sphagnum bogs – are dotted about, their large squarish pores quite unlike the little round holes of the true Cep. Phillips says they’re edible but not worthwhile. This isn’t stopping a pair of plump thirty-something Poles with a sports bag wandering along collecting them (National Nature Reserve? Really?). I greet them, establish their nationality, say my mother used to do the same in the Carpathians and that there aren’t many mushrooms here. The guy with the sports bag shows me a meagre haul of Birch Bog Boletes just about lining the bottom of his bag: he means, he hasn’t found much worth collecting. I try Natsional Natur Reservat and waggle my finger, we part smiling and he shuffles off sheepishly.
Phaeolus schweinitzii (giant polypore)
Under some Pine trees, a dead stump, killed by Phaeolus schweinitzii, three or four enormous dinner-plate sized yellow discs, thick and rough with orangey-brown branching tufts: they are overgrown Polypore bracket fungi, dangerous parasites of conifer tree roots. Nobody has given it an English name, which is a pity as the namers could really have fun with it: Yellow Pine Death? Giant Pine Polypore? A magnificent fungus, somewhat alarming if you’re a forester.
On the open sandy heath, some Ammophila sandwasps are still active, perching on the path. A few butterflies – a white, some Speckled Woods, probably a Red Admiral – are about; a very large brown butterfly with agile flight, dancing around a pine trunk and up high, is tantalisingly impossible to get binoculars on, was very probably a Fritillary, in which case it was likely the Silver-Washed Fritillary.
Robber Fly Machimus atricapillus on Thursley map
A couple of mean Robber Flies perched on a rather bleached map of the common: they had as Shakespeare said “a lean and hungry look”. They have a tuft of stiff bristles below their antennae to keep their prey from striking them in the head. They wait on a perch – a signboard will do if there’s nothing better – until an unsuspecting fly comes past, then they sally into the air and grab it.
I wasn’t really birding but it was nice to see a little cloud of House Martins flycatching, and a richly dressed Dabchick diving for food.
Foamy wisps of scented Meadowsweet flowers were visited by honeybees; a Strangalia maculata longhorn beetle (it doesn’t have an English name, but it’s not the one usually called Wasp Beetle) clambered slowly over the flowerheads. It looks reasonably wasplike, if not terribly convincingly; it would be interesting to know if it is itself foul-tasting and hence actually aposematic, or just hitching a free ride through Batesian mimicry.
Strangalia maculata, a waspish longhorn beetle, on Meadowsweet
Bee on Bramble flower
The Wetland Centre was very sunny, a little windy for butterflies (only Small Skipper, Red Admiral and Green-Veined White) but with the bees buzzing around the many flowers, very attractive. Several Orchids were in bloom, including purple and pyramidal. Even the different bindweeds looked wonderful. A pair of Mute Swans rested calmly with a cygnet or two at the bronze feet of Sir Peter Scott.
A teneral (new) darter
The dragonflies included one Black-tailed Skimmer, sunning itself on a “wildside” path; several blue hawkers, probably Hairy Dragonflies; an Emperor; a teneral darter, probably Common Darter; masses of blue damselflies – all the ones I managed to check were Azure Damselfly; and a few Common Bluetail damselflies.
Thursley Common on a sunny July day can shimmer with the wings of dragonflies. Today, hundreds of Keeled Skimmers, joined by plenty of other species large and small – from the mighty Emperor to the dainty Small Red Damsel, made the air seem to sparkle as brightly as the water beside the boardwalk. There were Keeled Skimmers perched alertly on stalks, ready to spring into the air at an instant’s notice; Keeled Skimmers in tussling pairs, their wings rustling and scuffling as they clashed in brief, brutal territorial disputes; Keeled Skimmers in groups of four or five, dashing and swerving over the water; Keeled Skimmers over every pond, bog pool, and lakeside.
Emperor Dragonfly patrolling its pond at waist height
Over one quieter pool, an Emperor Dragonfly patrolled in more stately fashion, almost hovering, drifting forward slowly as if a helicopter pilot was holding the machine’s collective drive stick just a little forward of the hover position, its striped blue tail gleaming in the sun.
Small Red Damselflies in cop over a bog pool at Thursley
A Four-Spotted Chaser, pausing momentarily over a sparkling pool
Many of the Odonata were busy laying eggs, from the Skimmers to the damselflies. One or two Black Darters were about: they can be here in large numbers later in the season.
Azure Damselfly pair egg-laying
On the sandy heath, the Sand-Wasp Ammophila sought her insect prey, her distinctive shape almost dragonfly-like with an extremely elongated red waist leading to a plump ‘tail’ to her abdomen.
Sand-Wasp Ammophila
Lizard on the boardwalk
Overhead, a Hobby dashed and stooped, handsome through binoculars, moustachioed, spotted below, its long scything wings like a giant Swift easily outpacing the fastest dragonfly. Below, a lizard rested unobtrusively at the edge of the boardwalk, ready to scuttle into the heather at any threat; another a yard further on. A Reed Bunting rasped out its short scratchy song, skreek, skreek, skrizzick. A Curlew called once; a Skylark soared invisibly high into the blue, singing as if John Keats were at hand to report on the beauty of its song.
Large Skipper on the rather special Cross-Leaved Heath
Four Wings Good, Eight Wings Better – Keeled Skimmers in cop
The English seem unemotional … except for their passion for nature
